FIONNGHUALA MANON FLANAGAN: IRISH PERSONALITY

Fionnghuala Manon "Fionnula" Flanagan

Fionnghuala Manon "Fionnula" Flanagan (1941) is an Irish actress and political activist. Flanagan was born and raised in Dublin, the daughter of Rosanna, née McGuirk, and Terence Niall Flanagan. Her father was an Irish Army officer and Communist who had fought in the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War against Franco. Although her parents were not Irish speakers, they wanted Fionnula and her four siblings to learn the Irish language, thus she grew up speaking English and Irish fluently. She was educated in Switzerland and England. She trained extensively at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin and travelled throughout Europe before settling in Los Angeles, California in early 1968.

Flanagan came to prominence in Ireland in 1965 as a result of her role as Máire in the Telefís Éireann production of the Irish language play An Triail, for which she received the Jacob's Award in Dublin for her outstanding performance. With her portrayal of Gerty McDowell in the 1967 film version of Ulysses, Flanagan established herself as one of the foremost interpreters of James Joyce. She made her Broadway debut in 1968 in Brian Friel's Lovers, then appeared in The Incomparable Max (1971) and such Joycean theatrical projects as Ulysses in Nighttown, as Molly Bloom, and James Joyce's Women (1977). It was subsequently filmed in 1983, with Flanagan both producing and playing all six main female roles (Joyce's wife, Nora Barnacle, as well as fictional characters Molly Bloom and Gerty McDowell).

More information: Irish America

A familiar presence in American television, Flanagan has appeared in several made-for-TV movies and she made guest appearances in three of the Star Trek spin-offs.

She appeared in such films as The Others opposite Nicole Kidman and with Helen Mirren in Some Mother's Son, written and directed by Terry George, as the militantly supportive mother of a Provisional Irish Republican Army hunger striker in 1981. Subsequently, she spoke at a memorial hosted by Sinn Féin at the Citywest Building in Dublin for Irish republicans and their kin who were killed during the latest installment of the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

Flanagan and her husband, since 1972, Dr. Garrett O'Connor, an Irish nationalist from Dublin, are known to host parties at their Hollywood Hills home for people in the Irish community. In July 2009, she joined Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams for a series of lectures across the USA supporting Irish unity. In October 2011, she announced her support for Sinn Féin politician Martin McGuinness in his unsuccessful bid in Ireland's 2011 presidential election.

I'm Irish and always will be, but America has taught me so much. 

Maybe it's here in the U.S. that we find a healing, for in the broader melting pot we get to look at some of these self-destructive attributes that we bring to bear upon our own quarrels and begin to solve them 

in ways other than just splitting apart. 

Fionnula Flanagan